William Birchynshaw’s Map of Exeter 1743

Abstract

with an outline and explanation of pre-Reformation practice which is perhaps unwarranted giving the date range and specialised audience of the publication. Generally, this section is structured in a chronological framing, with its first chapter examining the medieval origins of relief until the mid-eighteenth century; its second chapter moving onto outdoor relief during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; and a chapter on self-help and charity focussing on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The outlining of the island’s alternative legislative development and settlement policy makes interesting reading, but again the focus is eighteenth-nineteenth century heavy, with the period 1560–1760 being only largely dealt with in 11 pages and so making any claims to an in-depth study in this part of sixteenth and seventeenth-century parochial welfare perhaps redundant. In addition, the flow of the four parts of the book also seem to slightly askew: part one, Context, and part two, Welfare, work nicely together but it is unclear where the join is, apart from chronological narrative, between them and the latter two parts of the work. The most engrossing section of this work is the Town Hospital, St. Peter Port’s workhouse, whose four chapters take up most of the book’s length and reads like an in-depth, stand-alone institutional study. Throughout this section, we are presented with a detailed, thematic study of the institution including an administrative overview; inmate demographics; the routine of daily life in the hospital; and the Town Hospital asylum. The final section of the book outlines the chronological picture of welfare between 1900 and the early twenty-first century. In summary, the key issue here is its date range; the scope is huge. The mammoth task of researching and compiling such a study highlights Crossan’s ability as a researcher but ultimately, what we are presented with is a substantial, administratively driven narrative. What Crossan offers here is a large, readable and obviously passionate local study of welfare in Guernsey which is useful in presenting the familiar strands of welfare historiography in a new and understudied context. The book will be attractive to those with a personal connection to the island but Crossan’s claim in her introduction, however, was one of contextualisation and comparison, and one feels the book falls slightly short here; perhaps a shorter date range could stimulate a more comparative study. Despite this, what we are left with is a worthwhile window onto a little-known geographical area of Britain’s welfare history. Crossan’s work is detailed, and highly researched, outlining the story of nearly five centuries of Guernsey’s welfare system, providing intriguing evidence for exceptionalism which one hopes will stimulate readers into further research in the future.